Wednesday, March 16, 2011

More on that "US nuclear chair" - who has now been named as Gregory Jaczko, the chief of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, currently giving a report to Congress.

He says all the water has gone from the spent fuel pools at reactor No.4 in Fukushima No.1 facility, Japan's most troubled nuclear plant. This means there is nothing to stop the fuel rods from getting hotter and ultimately melting down.

The outer shell of the rods could also ignite, with enough force to propel the radioactive fuel inside over a wide area, he says.

Gregory Jaczko did not say how the information was obtained, but the NRC and US Department of Energy both have staff on site at the Fukushima complex of six reactors.

....

Staff at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant may receive "lethal doses" of radiation, the US nuclear regulator has told Congress. Gregory Jaczko, head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said:

We believe that around the reactor site there are high levels of radiation. It would be very difficult for emergency workers to get near the reactors. The doses they could experience would potentially be lethal doses in a very short period of time.

Oh my. When a government official admits the situation is that bad, you know things are really fucked up.

The important thing is to somehow keep all this in perspective. To evaluate the available information, weight it according to our best estimate of the credibility of that source, and decide what to do. For most of us, there's little or nothing we can do.